Watch: Episode 4 of ‘Growing Exposed’—Vancouver Coma

In this 4th episode of Growing Exposed, we return with tour guide Jason Wilcox as he leads us through an immaculate grow facility located just outside the beautiful city of Vancouver, British Columbia.

This licensed medical facility has come up with very creative methods that include stringing volleyball nets across the room to ensure full-grown plants of cannabis stay in perfected rows, like something you would see at a vineyard in Napa Valley.

Here, they grow a connoisseur strain called Coma Kush. And if you’re looking for something that’ll make you very relaxed (and by relaxed we mean “knock you the fuck out”), then Coma Kush is a strain that you too will find worth cultivating.

When you first enter the grow room, you will notice an old but gold technique in the vegetative stage, as this grower runs 36 600-Watt Metal Halide Hortilux bulbs, with one High Pressure Sodium lamp thrown into the mix. Introducing this hint of orange light in the vegetative stage gets them ready for the soon to be changing spectrum when they reach the flowering room.

And when you look up in the flowering room, you will see lamps mounted both horizontally and vertically and you may wonder why, but there is a solid reason for it. Vertically placed lights allow the terminal buds to get enough light, while top-down lighting allows more light to spread across the top canopy. Ensuring your plants have even light distribution means more uniform maturation of your bud at the end of the bloom stage.

While visiting the area where they keep their reservoir, we couldn’t help but notice this grower is running Green Planet Nutrients 4-Part Hydro Fuel, which is used as a base nutrient system. And then, of course, the grower is also using the secret weapon with the world’s best flowering additive—Massive Bloom Formulation. And then a few other additives, Liquid W-8, Pro-Cal and Finisher ensure these plants have the best of both macro and micronutrients available to grow big beautiful buds. Green Planet Nutrients are considered the cleanest plant food in the industry with the highest quality sourced ingredients, and as you can see in this garden tour, it causes very aggressive growth in cannabis plants.

Even though it’s called a feed-to-waste system, this grower doesn’t waste.

Water is recycled once a day, filling up a full reservoir with entirely recaptured water. Everywhere we look in this facility, it’s built for top efficiency with minimal waste. Hats off to this grower for reducing their carbon footprint!

Being in the grow room all day every day can definitely take its toll on your body, particularly your eyes. Over time, you can actually damage your eyes from unprotected exposure. Imagine looking directly at the sun, now imagine doing that all the time, all day, every day. That’s what working in a grow room is like on your retinas. You may not notice it right away, but eventually you’ll wish you invested in some specialty eyewear. Thankfully, Method Seven Grow Room optics has your eyes “covered.”

Method Seven headquarters are located in Santa Cruz, California and is run by a seriously awesome guy named James Cox. The company began in 2012, designing optics specifically for use under the high-intensity yellow light of HPS lamps.

Eventually, they branched off, making specialty lenses for other lighting situations, such as LED and MH bulbs, and they even make eyewear for solar polarization for outdoor growers. With 11 different minerals blended into the glass, these made-in-Germany lenses protect your vision from the high intensity light and heat of your chosen lighting situation, while also color-correcting your world.

Near the end of the episode, Jason Wilcox gives us some tips on when to tell those colas are ripe and ready.

“At this point, I’d go in and look at the trichomes and see whether it’s milky and how much amber is on them, so I can determine whether it’s my time to harvest,” Wilcox explained.

You may also wonder, at the end of your flowering cycle: “Why are my leaves changing color?”

Don’t panic. You know in autumn, when the trees turn colorful and pretty? This process, called “autumning off,” is basically the same. The plant has spent all of its energy growing those sticky buds and is now pulling nitrogen and chlorophyll from its leaves to finish off ripening its flowers.

You’ll also notice your pistils (the little hairs that cover your buds) are either standing up or lying down. White pistils that are standing up indicate the bud is not entirely ripe yet, and if you see your pistils are changing color and starting to fall down, it’s time to harvest.

From growing tips and lighting tricks, down to grow room optics and volleyball netting, this episode of Growing Exposed has covered many bases.